Taking a Break

I am headed for Ecuador for 3 weeks of photographing tropical dragonflies and damselflies with 2 friends.I hope someone will fill in for me here, jeering Faith and Mindspawn's asinine posts. I hardly ever read one of their posts that does not contain numerous errors.Have fun and live life large.

Well, I am back from my trip. We had a lot of fun, but were disappointed that the habitat had been destroyed at some of the places we revisited.The weather prior to our visit was drier than it had been in 2009 in some of the localities, so there were a lot fewer species than we found 4 years ago. One species we particularly wanted to see and photograph again was found at 3 new sites, which was great, because the original site where we found it has been completely destroyed.Anyway, if any of you are interested, I have started adding photos to an album on my facebook page (20 so far...I shot more than 3200). PM me and I will send a link to any of the EvC regulars.I do ask that you do not share or post my images anywhere else.

RAZD, I'm glad you and your dad enjoyed them. My Dad liked them too. I lost him last year, but his encouragement will always guide my life.I sent you links to some others also.Thanks for your interest!

AZPaul, It looks like images are linked to, rather than actually posted here. I have a flickr account so I probably can upload a few images there and then link them. I guess I have always thought of EvC as social media. There are some things I do not like about facebook, but it is a way to share experiences with family and also communicate with a bunch of colleagues who share my interests in science and photography. I am not interested in sharing the minutia of my day and I turn off the display of other people who do that (nobody cares what they had for breakfast). In many cases the forest was cut, the large valuable trees were removed for lumber and the rest (smaller trees) were left lying on the ground. Sometimes everything was burned and and crops (coffee, cacao, bananas, oil palm, etc.) were planted, but often the crops were just planted around the lying trees. These places often had shacks built on them, with families living there.We did take some photos of these places and I will try and post some of those also.The types of habitat we like to explore are small jungle streams and ponds that we see along dirt roads out in the rural areas. These roads are usually lined by developed agricultural fields and small villages for the first dozen kilometers or so, but often they enter areas where the prime forest still grows and human habitation is limited to a path leading eventually to a single shack with one family and their garden.We wade the streams, which can be densely overgrown by an incredible profusion plants and also crisscrossed with fallen trees. It is a lot of fun, but really tough going and lots of the plants have spines and leaves with toxins and there are stinging ants everywhere. This is where we find some really incredible dragonflies and damselflies, sometimes undescribed, because no one has explored that stream before.The other thing that really destroys the habitat is when the forest is cut to provide grazing land for cattle. The riparian vegetation completely disappears and mud and cow manure contaminate the stream. These stream often were the drinking and washing water supplies for people, but no more.Ponds sometimes fare better, because the poor rural people do not have access to the heavy equipment to fill them in, but this is starting to happen also. We spend quite a lot of our time in the low lands east of the Andes, The Amazon. There is a lot of oil exploration development going on there with pipelines and tanker trucks everywhere.I will try and post a few shots here. Also sending you a PM.

I could be wrong about this, but my understanding is that you can look at the galleries that I am sending you the links to, without needing to log in or join facebook in any way. I am also in the process of uploading images to flickr galleries, but there really is not much difference in looking at public galleries anywhere on the web.I have sent you a PM.

Hi Larni, thanks.Happy Birthday

AZPaul, thanks for your kind words. I'm glad you were able to see them.I spent all of May down in your area, Arizona, New Mexico and a bit of Colorado. I visited Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon and then spent a bunch of time on the Gila River in NM and on Arivaipa Creek in SE AZ. Beautiful country and great shooting!

Well you seem to have done pretty well without my help.

I am posting a few of my images and will add more as I get them processed and uploaded.
Zenithoptera lanei is a very small dragonfly ~25mm in length. The body is drab and plain but the wings are metallic blue on the dorsal surface and shiny black ventrally. The wings are used for display by both males and females.
An interesting wing display that I have only seen performed by this single species. We found 3 new sites for it and discovered that the site where we photographed it in 2009 had been destroyed by cattle.
Elasmothemis cannacrioides was relatively common on more open streams.
Heteragrion sp. are often found on shadier streams where you can only see the yellow bits. This one posed nicely for me in a bit of sun. I haven't determined which species it is yet.
A Mnesarete metallica male. The damselflies in this genus are all very showy and like to perch in the sun,on the tips of leaves overhanging streams.
A well camouflaged grasshopper.
A thunderstorm in Loreto, Ecuador. Another type of photography I am really interested in is extreme weather. This shot was one of a series taken from the doorway of our hotel. This was the nicest hotel we stayed in the entire trip. It was brand new and only $12.50 per night. The town of Loreto is not a tourist spot at all and after several tries on successive evenings we gave up trying to find a restaurant with edible food and ate crackers and peanut butter and fresh fruit. The owners of the hotel hope to have a nice restaurant in a year or so.